Welcome to the Fabula Center

Some stories never fully coalesce into a narratives that inspire, create, and construct a sense of who we are. When a person dies, the remnants of their stories can swirl by wafting into an invisible and unusable crevice. These precious pieces fall by the wayside unless carefully cultivated towards a life-giving and sustained narrative.

At The Fabula Center, we work with the raw material of stories and weave them into a narrative, into stories of becoming. For example, for those who are living with grief, memories are connected together into a basis that creates a re-membering story that honors an ongoing relationship, rather than enforcing a sense of separation from dead loved ones.

Focusing on grief and redefining the way in which we honor one's passing is an emerging practice. For the last hundred years, grief has been thought of in terms of the need to let go, to say goodbye, to reject ongoing relationship with the dead. Grief psychology has thus emphasized an emotional severing of the relationship between the deceased and the bereaved that may often inflame, rather than ameliorate, the experience of loss. The problem rests not in the bereaved person, but rather, in outdated approaches that produce this kind of reality for those who seek meaning and connection following the death of a loved one. Grief counseling should help people find sources of comfort and strength rather than magnify what is already painful enough.

In recent years there has been a re-discovery of the bonds between the dead and the living, but these bonds need to be articulated in a form of conversation that generates forms of living. Teaching these forms of conversational practice are what this center is dedicated to.